Religious Liberty for a Citizen, Pastor, and Judge
By Ray Higgins
Standing today with a pastor and judge in his exercise of religious liberty is a very Baptist thing to do.
Religious liberty is the signature personal, social and moral value for Baptists. Baptists have championed religious liberty from our beginnings in the early 1600s.
Three Baptist pastors in colonial America—Roger Williams, Isaac Backus and John Leland—spoke, wrote, preached and lobbied for religious liberty.
They were controversial. Political and religious leaders tried to imprison them.
Yet, their views of religious liberty, through the leadership of James Madison, became the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.
Baptist pastors and ministers like them, and like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Will Campbell, have creatively and courageously exercised their religious liberty on many religious, moral and political issues.
Today, we highlight this principle of religious liberty in support of Judge and Pastor Wendell Griffen, who is one of our partner pastors, and a personal friend and colleague whom I have known for 20 years.
As a judge, pastor and citizen, who served in the United States Army achieving the rank of 1st Lieutenant before his honorable discharge, Judge & Pastor Griffen’s very expressions of his religion are exactly what the First Amendment and the Arkansas Religious Freedom Restoration Act are designed to protect and guarantee.
When Pastor Griffen silently prayed while lying on a cot in solidarity with Jesus on Good Friday, he did not impose his religious beliefs on others. He did not restrict the freedom of anyone else. He caused no physical harm. And, he created no legitimate reasons for being sanctioned or impeached.
This is why we stand with Judge & Pastor Griffen.
Ray Higgins, Ph.D., is Executive Coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Arkansas and can be reached at 501.223.8586 (o) www.cbfar.org
